Mailrooms for CIA, high court tainted

Trace amounts discovered off-site

no infection found

WASHINGTON — Small amounts of anthrax were found Friday at off-site mailrooms serving the U.S. Supreme Court and the Central Intelligence Agency, adding to the list of high-profile U.S. institutions that have been touched by the bacteria scare.

The Supreme Court joins two other symbols of government--Congress and the White House--affected by the anthrax attacks. But all of the spores may have come from the same source, the central mail facility in Washington that handled an anthrax-tainted letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

Meanwhile, the White House said Friday that the high-quality anthrax shipped to Daschle originated from a small, sophisticated laboratory and did not necessarily come from a state-sponsored terrorist group or a large terrorist organization.

"It could only be produced by a PhD microbiologist, and it would have to be done in a small, well-equipped microbiology lab," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "That does not rule out that it could be state-sponsored. . . . But it certainly expands it beyond state sponsorship or foreign locations."

A law-enforcement official confirmed that investigators increasingly believe the anthrax did not come from a state--Iraq, for example. "State sponsorship is being considered more and more unlikely," the official said.

At the Supreme Court, anthrax was found in an air filter at a warehouse that receives mail addressed to the court but is not part of the court building itself. "We have no evidence of any contamination in the Supreme Court building," the court said in a statement.

No court employees show signs of anthrax, but all 400 people who work in the building were being tested, and the court was shut down.

"Although it's a conservative approach for us to take, we're making the assumption that quite possibly something may have come to the mailroom here," said Dr. John Eisold, the Capitol attending physician. He refused to say whether the nine justices were being tested.

Justices may meet elsewhere

If the court remains closed Monday, the justices will convene at the District of Columbia federal courthouse. Court officials said they knew of no other instance when the Supreme Court had met to work at a location other than its building.

Visitors to the court should not be concerned, officials said.

"Tourists are not at risk," Eisold said, speaking from the front steps of the court. "We really are looking for the people who physically handle the mail in this building."

The anthrax at the CIA also was found at a remote mail building, the Material Inspection Facility, and it was a minuscule sample.

"The amount found in the MIF is medically insignificant--in other words, well below the amount needed to cause inhalation anthrax," said CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. The facility would nonetheless be closed temporarily as a precaution, he said.

There was no indication that the CIA was a target, and no anthrax has been found in the agency's headquarters despite numerous tests. Even at the mail facility, 30 of the 31 tests were negative.

Like the Supreme Court, the CIA receives mail from Brentwood, Washington's central processing facility. Four postal workers there have contracted anthrax, and two of them have died.

No mail into CIA

"It is possible that the trace amount of anthrax found in the MIF facility came from incidental contact with other mail that went through Brentwood," Harlow said. All mail has been blocked from coming into the CIA, and Director George Tenet spoke to the CIA's employees Friday to assure them that the agency is protecting them.

A small anthrax sample also was found Friday at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research outside Washington. Officials announced that the bacteria had been found at one of the 36 satellite offices that receives mail from Brentwood.

On Friday night, officials said trace amounts of anthrax had been discovered in the offices of Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), John Baldacci (D-Maine) and Rush Holt (D-N.J.). Spores were detected on the sixth and seventh floors of the Longworth House Office Building.

In recent days, anthrax has been found at a major U.S. institution nearly every day--Congress, the White House, the State Department and now the Supreme Court and CIA.

It is far from certain that all those agencies received packets of anthrax, and some of the initial test results may turn out to be false. But the extensive precautionary screening under way at government buildings has resulted in a stream of worrisome revelations, multiplying the psychological effect of the bioterrorist attack.

Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said it is likely that more anthrax-tainted letters are circulating around Washington, given that a State Department worker contracted respiratory anthrax earlier this week. It is "highly unlikely to virtually impossible" that the worker got sick merely from handling a letter that passed through the Brentwood facility, Koplan said.